Lenovo on Tuesday announced the ThinkPad X220 laptop, which is one of the early ultraportable laptops running on new processors based on Intel's Sandy Bridge microarchitecture.

The X220 comes with a 12.5-inch display and will be powered by Intel's Core i3, i5 or i7 processors running at clock speeds between 2.1GHz and 2.7GHz, Lenovo said in a statement. The laptop weighs less than 3 pounds (1.3 kilograms) with a four-cell battery.

The laptop can provide up to 15 hours of battery life with a nine-cell battery, according to Lenovo. The laptop's run time can stretch up to 24 hours with an external battery.

The company also announced a convertible variant of the X220 -- the X220 Tablet -- which will include a swivel touchscreen. The screen will accept multitouch input for users to manipulate photos, control applications or scroll down documents. The screen is based on Gorilla Glass technology for protection from scratches and cracks.

The X220 Tablet weighs 3.88 pounds with a four-cell battery.

The X220 and the X220 Tablet will both have hard-drive storage of up to 320GB or solid-state drive storage of up to 160GB. They will have up to 8GB of memory and select models will include USB 3.0 ports.

They also include a DisplayPort and VGA ports to attach monitors. The specification sheets for them do not list the availability of HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) ports, which are commonly used to connect laptops to high-definition TV sets.

The X220 laptop will become available in April starting at US$899. Pricing for the X220 Tablet was not immediately available.

PC makers have just started announcing ultraportable laptops with Sandy Bridge chips. Dell on Monday said it would announce a lightweight laptop with Sandy Bridge microprocessors in the next few weeks.

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